Aspirations. Vacations. Bon Iver.

Thanks to everyone who is still following my blog! Due to finals, papers, and the general crazyness of life, I have been unable to put a post up in the last few months. Now that summer has come and I have settled in back in Eau Claire, I plan to be a pretty frequent blogger, and you can count on that!

Coming back to the ol' EC has really been something. Seeing all the places I had spent so much time at: Starbucks on Hastings, Mt. Simon, Valleybrook, Acoustic Cafe, The Living Room, etc has given me this deep sense of being home. I feel like a fish back in the water after a semester away on dry land. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE Minneapolis. There's just something that can't be replaced by the feeling you get coming home.

Originally, I didn't have plans for the summer. That didn't last long. As of now, I'm working (hopefully two jobs), doing an internship-y thing at my home church, as well as taking a couple of weeks out of the summer to play some guitar at a few kids camps across the midwest. I just got back from a road trip from the East Coast all the way back to Eau Claire. It isn't even June yet, and I already have a feeling I'll be asking myself where this summer went before it was even here.

As busy as this summer is looking, I still have some aspirations for what I want to do this summer. One of those things is spend as much time with my friends and family as possible. I miss them so much during the year, so I plan on getting as much of them as possible. Another is to read new book each week. After week one, I am pleased to announce that I am on schedule! Another goal was to take a roadtrip, but that one is already crossed out.

In the midst of all of this, there is one thing I think I am in anticipation for more than anything: the new Bon Iver album. This guy, also an Eau Claire native, has written some of the best music that there is. If you haven't heard of them, seriously, look them up. They announced their new single on Twitter today, and simply listening to them inspires me. It gives me hope in what I already know: that there is more out there for me than Eau Claire. Someone rising to this much recognition coming from Eau Claire is kind of unheard of, and seeing them do it makes me know that I can too.

The fame isn't even what it is all about. I don't care if I ever become famous.It's definitely not about Eau Claire either. Through the last few years of going away to college I have learned that even if I never end up living in Eau Claire again, I will NEVER forget where I come from. There is a special place in my heart for the town where I became who I am today, and that cannot be replaced. With that said, I know that there is more for me out there. Whether it be people I meet, oppourtunities I recieve, or just being away in a new place, I know that there is a chapter of my life story that doesn't take place in Eau Claire.

This can be a scary thing. I know that many people do not leave the town for this reason. As great of a place as your hometown is, its a shame to stay in its comfort when you feel your heart telling you to go elsewhere. I agree with Erwin McManus, in that I beleve God created us with an intrinsic need to know, to ask questions, to wonder "why?". That's why humans have always been searching. Since the beginning of the human story, since the beginning of your life, you have been searching for something. Whether that be the meaning of life, or which of your regular coffee shops your going to visit the next day, you should never ignore that need to explore.

And that brings me to the beginning of this summer. A summer of Aspirations, Vacations, and Bon Iver. In the absense of a computer for two weeks, I have begun to write down some of my thoughts on paper, and I am hoping to put them up here at least once a week. Thank you for staying faithful to this blog in the long drought of writing in the last few months. I assure you, the drought is over.

-Clark

The Power of a Word

Our words have power.

Words in themselves are nothing more than air being manipulated and bent into different wavelengths by our mouths. Simply vibrations in the air. But words hold much more power in themselves than that. Words contain the power to do much more than what they physically do.

Words have the power to unite us. This is where we get the gift of language. Language has defined cultures for ages. When that air is vibrated in particular ways, we can begin to form words, with words sentences, with sentences paragraphs, and with paragraphs, stories, and with stories, our story. Humankind's story. The gift of language is something of immense power. In the early days of humankind, it almost was too much power for man to handle.

In Genesis 11, we see the story of the power of language. We meet the human race as one nation. At this point in time, all humans speak the same language. There is no misunderstanding. God had commanded the people to "scatter over the face of the whole earth" and make nations for themselves.

Humankind had another idea in mind. In Genesis 11:4, humans began to say to each other, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth." They had heard God's plan for them, but they decided to make one up for themselves. They thought they knew better. Better than the One who made them.

God knew the power of a word. God knew that a word was all it took to create the Heavens and Earth. God knew that it took simply a word to create something out of nothing. He came and saw the tower that humans had been building, and knew that nothing would get in humankinds way if they would continue to be unified under one language. God had no other choice but to confuse us and create many different languages. We could not handle that kind of power.

As a human being, you were created in God's image. He spoke everything else into existence, except for you. For humans, God breathed the "breath of life" into us, and created our bodies out of the dust. To me, this is sort of similar to blowing up a balloon. Balloons are filled with air, but all that a balloon actually consists of is a thin layer of latex. It holds the air inside it to a special shape. We are very similar to the balloon. We have the "breath of life" breathed in to us, and our bodies are merely holding it in.

In this sense, we have both physical and spiritual realities. We are unlike any of God's creation in that we are beings that inhabit both physical and spiritual worlds. We consist of a body and spirit. God gave humans something special. In humans, God gave us the power to create. To create in a similar fashion than He did. With words.

I am in no way trying to compare our ability to create to our Creator's ability to create. God created everything that we see and everything that we do not. We are merely images of Him, and only can piece together what He has already made. Therefore, we are not creators, but in a sense "assemblers" of something that always was, even before we were. If we do not truly create, then whenever we are "creating", we are really putting together pieces of a grander puzzle of creation, already created by the Creator.

Take for example, the cloned sheep Dolly. Dolly was manufactured in a laboratory by scientists, and was not born the natural way. When Dolly was born, the world claimed that they had created on their own. They had played God.

But did they? Did those scientists mention to create anything? Did they think of the sheep before they made it, and weave it together like God did in the beginning? No.

They were only reflecting the image of our Creator.

That is why I say words have power. Words have the power to assemble the image of a creation. When we read a story, we are not taking in information and processing it to make a robotic analysis of what we are reading. Instead, we create the story for ourselves. We see characters; we can taste what they are tasting, smell what they are smelling, etc. We are in the story for ourselves.

Our words have power. This is why entire nations can gather around a single individual or a cause, simply because of words. This is why words have the power to capture our emotions, hearts and minds with a well-put together story. This is why words have the power to create the Heavens and the Earth.

Words have power.

Failing Successfully

"I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward."

-Thomas Edison

These last few weeks since I have been back at college, I have really begun to explore what I am really going to do with my life. I know it is sort of late in the game to be figuring this out, but I've begun to face the music in a sense that I don't know what I'm going to do after college. As I have been exploring possible careers for me, I seem to have learned more about life than a career or job. Here are a couple of my discoveries:

The more I have looked, the more things I find that aren't what I want to do. This was very discouraging at first, but I do know that there is some career out there that is the right one for me. When I find the next thing that I thought I could do for a living that doesn't work, I know I am one step closer to finding that perfect job. Its ok to not find that perfect job right away. People change jobs all the time. This is normal.

A stumbling block for me has been that there is more than one thing I am passionate about. I am a pretty passionate guy when it comes to things I like. I tend to become very inspired by lots of little things, and then pursue them. For example, I became inspired to create films after watching a handful of Rob Bell's NOOMA videos at my small group in high school. To me, they were hip, artistic, and deep, and I was like "hey, I want to be hip, artistic, and deep!". I became inspired to do music after seeing a local artist rise to fame while I was in high school. Heck, I even became inspired to play basketball as a kid because of the movie Space Jam. Now my thing that I'm on seems to be freelance writing. I've been taking a class on it, and I gotta say, I've got a lot of work to do on it, but I don't really have anywhere to go but up.

Something recently that I have found many people don't do is to define what success means to them. Where do I want to be in ten years? twenty years? What do I want my life to look like? Where do I want to live? These are all questions that I have never really asked myself until now. It's good to know where you want to be before you pick a direction.

This journey is a new and exciting chapter in my life. I do not know what he future holds for me. As I continue on, there are a few fundamental truths that I have to hang on to:

-God has a plan for my life. He has given me a good mind, and many opportunities to use it, along with many other talents and gifts. He didn't give these to me in order for them to be squandered, but rather to be used for His Kingdom and His Glory.

-It's ok to be searching for a career path at this point in my life. I sometimes forget that I am only twenty years old, and a sophomore in college. This is my time in life to explore the world, and to see all that wonders and treasures it holds. In the next few years, the rest of my life will be shaped and formed into what it will be. I shouldn't feel ashamed or worried about not knowing at this point.

-There is a difference between a calling and a career. For so long, I have thought that the two weresynonymous. A career is what I will be doing to support myself and my family. A calling can include a career, but goes much deeper than that. A calling goes into who we are. God has not only called us to a certain job, but has mad us to be a certain person. It's much more important to focus on what who we are going to be, not what we are going to be.

- It's okay to not be the best at something. I have had problems with pride my entire life, and I am learning that it is not about climbing to the top of whatever achievement ladder I'm on currently. It's not about comparing how good we are to the next guy, because I will always be better or worse than them. Not who I am supposed to be.

-Failure is normal, and something that everyone experiences. I have been so worried to fail in my life. I have learned that failure is a necessary part of success. Many of history's greatest people have experienced large amounts of doubt, discouragement and failure in their own live's before becoming who they are. Probably the most famous quote of this comes from Thomas Edison when asked about discovering the light bulb.

"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that it won't work."

In the quest of discovering my own personal lightbulb, I have just found a lot of ways that it doesn't shed any light. I am going to keep searching, and want to encourage you all to do the same.

The me God has wired me to be.

Well, its been at least like 8 months since I have really put anything on here. I've been going in and out of wanting to have a blog for a while now, and since I still really like the name of this one, I think I will keep it. Even though it has a completely different meaning than what it did last year when I began writing on this, I think that the name of this blog still has merit. I find that I am on a completely different place than I was last post. I don't feel that a special blog to catch up would be necessary, so I will just start with today.

I have been home for about two weeks now on Christmas break from school. It has been a time of learning and growing, both towards God as well as learning new things about myself as well. I am finding out that these things are very intertwined. Most of my time has been spent with my girlfriend Jamie, at my house, or at a coffee shop. Nothing to complain about there I guess.

One thing that God is really showing me is that we are all unique. I have been reading a book called "The Me I Want to Be" by John Ortberg, and I have found that this book is guiding me towards a version of myself that is much closer to who God has wired me to be. I am learning that there are many different versions of me that I have been throughout my life, and most of them are not the me God has created me to be, but rather different, incomplete versions. I have lived most of my life as a broken, incomplete version of myself, which hinders the intentions that God has for my life and for those whom I do life with. I have begun to realize that I am unique.

I am different from everyone else on the planet. There may be those who share similarities with me, but there is no one on earth, or will there ever be anyone who can be quite as much like Clark Strasburg as I can. I am not a part of a mass-produced human race with no significant meaning, but rather I am a singular masterpiece within a planet of 6 billion other masterpieces.

I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

This is the journey I am on right now. This journey takes me to places within myself that have not seen much light in my life. This journey may take me to areas of treasure and passion within myself, or it may take me to places of wounds that have yet to be discovered. Most likely both. Hopefully, I will remain diligent enough to keep posting as I move forward in this journey as I study the inner workings of Clark Strasburg.

I like to close things with quotes from time to time, and I think this one is going to be my motto for the next few weeks or so.

"Be who you are and be it well" -Francis de Sales

Dying to Self

I saw this on another blog that I was reading, and it really made me think.

When you are forgotten, or neglected, or purposely set at naught, and you don't sting and hurt with the insult or the oversight, but you heart is happy, being counted worthy to suffer for Christ, THAT IS DYING TO SELF.

When your good is evil spoken of, when your wishes are crossed, your advice disregarded, your opinions ridiculed, and you refuse to let anger rise in your heart, or even defend yourself, but take it all in patient loving silence, THAT IS DYING TO SELF.

When you lovingly and patiently bear any disorder, any irregularity, and impunctuality, or any annoyance; when you can stand face to face with waste, folly, extravagance, spiritual insensitivity...and endure it as Jesus endured it, THAT IS DYING TO SELF.

When you are content with any food, any offering, any raiment, any climate, any society, any solitude, and any interruption by the will of God, THAT IS DYING TO SELF.

When you never care to refer to yourself in conversation, or to record your own good works, or itch after commendation, when you can truly love to be unknown, THAT IS DYING TO SELF.

When you can see your brother prosper and have his needs met, and can honestly rejoice with him in spirit and feel no envy nor question God, while your own needs are far greater and in desperate circumstances, THAT IS DYING TO SELF.

When you can receive correction and reproof from one of less stature than yourself, and can humbly submit inwardly as well as outwardly, finding no rebellion or resentment rising up within your heart, THAT IS DYING TO SELF.